Preppers and Doomers - what do you think?

[clothmama]

Sorry this is long!!

I came across a forum while looking for something (not even sure what now) and have left an as yet unidentified number of page long forum thread open and I'm reading through it. It is on a forum that is basically there to discuss the 'how do we deal with the world going to pot' - I think . I'm pretty sure that is what they are about. Some of them call themselves doomers which I'm presuming to be that they believe that it will all go pretty bad and preppers who seem to be a little more relaxed about the whole thing going completely haywire but still think they should 'be prepared' (like any good scout I guess . What I'm reading thus far is about the planning for the 'what ifs' of society as we know it, world food supplies etc to not be as we know them now. this seems to include learning skills about how to hunt and fish and food growing and storing of many months of staples.

This has really piqued my interest due to what is going on over here with the flooding and the lack of supplies. I walked into the supermarket today and the veggie area was a sea of black plastic with a pile of of bags of tomatoes (so excited I have a kilo of something fresh ) at one end and a few herbs on a cold shelf (and a strange unidentifiable tropical fruit thing). I actually felt quiet shocked as it reminded me of photos from the eastern block or a war torn country and the queues for hours for bread etc. I then RAN through the supermarket (Tory doesnt' run ) to get my hands on some uht milk that had just come out. OK I was polite and didn't knock anyone over, I even gave an old man 1 of my litres of milk as he had missed out and then another litre to my CM as a 'swap' for the bread she baked me. However the fact is I acted out of character a/ by leaving all my stuff at the checkout (1/2 checked out) and b/ by running through the store and c/ by perhaps taking more than I should have but I felt so strongly that I needed to provide for my family (I got 6 litres for us plus the 1 for the CM), and I felt so much calmer once I had that milk as I know that we will be OK for at least a week, or longer if I'm careful.

Mr CM dream of our next home and have a vision of somewhere with a little bit of land (maybe and acre but now thinking a bit more would be better!) where we can be semi self -sufficient by growing veg, producing part or all of our power (he is preferring 'off-grid' where I'm liking the idea of 'off-grid ready' ), putting in things like geo-thermal heating, solar etc.

The stuff I was reading about and also seeing just how quickly a town can have no food (Monday everything was normal today there was very little to buy indeed - hopefully things will get better as obviously a truck managed to get in with the little milk that arrived) has made me think maybe we do need to think about going further and having a proper storage system for food etc adn really making sure that we are self sufficient rather than just the 'semi' I envisaged. The other issue is money. Apparently someone bought a normal lettuce yesterday for over $4 - eek . If I had kept my pots up and replanted after they died during my exams I'd have rocket and tomatoes etc where now I have nothing. Mr CM picked over a scraggy bit of lettuce in the bottom of the fridge to get something that we could eat fresh with our dinner, honestly it was something that we all would have normally binned (perked up no end in a bit of water) . So ther is yet another question - how much stuff am I binning that should be eaten? I'm seriously thinking of going to the nursery and getting some more things to plant (fast growers) as things will get worse here cost wise and it could be for a very long time .

Has anyone else thought about this?
Do you see a time, perhaps not so far in the future where food is harder to get hold of and / or prohibitively expensive?
Should we all be thinking about it?
Are we already on our way to being 'prepared' in that at least we can keep our babies clean (washable wipes), dry (cloth nappies) and fed without being reliant on the supermarkets (from the perspective of many of us are pro bf and many of us choose to a lot of the time make our own baby food etc)?
If you already grow some food could you use the skills you have learned to up the level of production if you needed to?
Do you 'store' food (I suppose I'm talking buying in large bulk to last staples like rice and flour) enough to last you say a few months if need be?

Sorry this has turned into such a big post but I feel like I have so many ideas running around my head!

my other half always laughs that I have enough pasta/rice and tinned tomatoes to see us through the year

I guess its one of those foods I know no matter how tight we get money wise as long as there is pasta and tomatoes we can eat

We did attempt once to grown our own veg but we were pretty bad at maintenance, then hubby grew chillis but they got covered in green fly and I killed the plant trying to get rid of the flies....

I would like to be more self sufficient and have always said if we're ever in our own house I would like to try and provide some of the energy ourselves x

mmmm I would love to grow more and I think this year we will try to get a few things in the ground but I really struggle for time to maintain and I am a bit doomed when it comes to plants!

I do however buy in bulk, partly to save money but also a big motivator for me is that I don't have to go shopping very often. So once a month I will go to Costco and I actually thought about this yesterday when you mentioned the shortages, I do have alot of food in, granted not alot of fresh stuff but I have a carton of UHT milk (which I use to make yogurt ) and then I have cupboards full of pasta, rice, tea, coffee, flour, sugar (I don't have much strong flour but loads of SR and a good few packets of yeast) and tons of various tins. So I did think we wouldn't worry about lack of supplies for maybe a few weeks.

I do sometimes wonder when things grind to a halt like when we have had the major snow falls last year what it will be like if things became permanently difficult.

From being a student, i alwasy make sure i have pasta, rice and noodles and tins in aswell because the number of times it got to just before loan day and you litterally ended up with £1.50 to live off of for 2 weeks. And as we dont drink much milk (im slightly lactose intollerant) we always have plenty of UHT milk in for when guests come over for brews etc and I use that for baking too. always have plenty of flour and baking ingredients in as you never know when you want cake So I could probably make about 5 loaves of bread and still have brown and self rasing flour aswell.
with what we have in our cupboards i recon we could survive for 3-4 weeks easily. And thats pretty much normal for me. I dont like to run out of things, and i dont like to go shopping every week if i can help it.

Im a Prepper - life is too short to be a Doomer

It really hits hard when things you consider a necessity arent there any more - with no electric, heating, warm water (or internet :shock; ) last year for 5 days after the snow storms brought down all the local power cables, we had to just make do. Thankfully the cupboards were full, but we had no way of cooking much - dh ended up building a contraption for the open fire so we could use a pot - it was rubbish but amazing how you get by.

Being semi-self sufficient would be great - it would take so much pressure off if you could do a few things like growing some veg, were able to generate your own heat/electricity - not only in terms of finances, but not having to depend on others to do it for you. We have a side garden dh grew a good few bits in last year, this year he wants to grow some more and I love to bottle and preserve a few bits too so it lasts longer than 10 minutes after its been dug up/picked - it really gave him a great feeling of achievement when we were eating carrots that he grew

We have plenty of camp cookers and gas lamps and torches from being scout leaders, but if you want to be really prepared you can generally get a 1 hob camp stove pretty cheeply and the canisters are very reasonable as well. also a gas lamp not only provides light, but it also chucks out a lot of heat as well, so if you were without light and heat a gas lamp is an ideal thing to have.
Might be OTT, but always be prepared eh

Don't watch 'The Road' or read 'Last Light' by Alex Scarrow, you'll be running to the hills with your supplies before you know it!